


The Second Time

by LadyNovaJade



Series: Three Times Toni and Steve Danced [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Comfort, Dancing, F/M, Reliving the Past, Steve feeling a lot of guilt, dealing with grief, sad Toni
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 20:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNovaJade/pseuds/LadyNovaJade
Summary: It's been a while since Steve woke to find Toni not next to him. Even more worrying is how she bottles her grief over her parents ... and the secret Steve continues to keep from her.





	The Second Time

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is where I finally reveal that my Toni is younger than the male Tony. According to Marvel Universe, male Tony was born in 1970, which would have made him 21 when his parents died in 1991. I wanted my female Toni to be younger when they passed; and younger in general. I have always imagined my Toni in her mid to late 30s during Ultron and Civil War. I have always wanted her to still appear older than Cap, even though Steve technically is you know, over 100.  
> So, my Toni was born in 1980 and her parents died when she was 15; in 1995. You’ll get a bit more of this explained when I get into my Civil War AU, but I wanted to give you a touch now to explain.

Steve came out of sleep rather slowly. He blinked once, then again, his eyes focusing on the splashes of color appearing out the windows as the sun rise began to paint the skyline. The time and weather display on the far glass pane showed it was getting close to 6 a.m. — practically sleeping in for Steve. Rolling onto his back, he drew in a deep breath before giving up thoughts of pulling Toni closer and going back to sleep …

He turned his head suddenly to the other side of the bed, seeing it empty. His brow furrowed — well that hadn’t happened in a while.

Steve sat up and put a hand to her pillow, noting how cold it was. So she had been up and gone for some time then.

Not bothering to ask FRIDAY where Toni might have gotten off to, he swung his legs out of bed and grabbed the pair of khakis draped over a nearby chair. He pulled them on and moved toward the closet for a T-shirt. Five minutes later — after checking both the kitchen and the lab — Steve was stepping off the elevator at Toni’s garage level. It had become her second lab in the sense she would go there to hide when she’d had a particularly bad day. She’d confessed to him once that working on her cars was therapeutic and cheaper than a psychoanalyst.  
  
Walking up to the entrance, he heard muffled, soft music. It threw him off so much, he paused in raising his hand to type in the access code. Any time — and he truly meant _any time_ — Toni played music anyone else could hear, it was loud classic rock. The kind that rattled the glass and made her smile as she bobbed her head with the lyrics.

He _was_ privy to her music secrets, as well — private playlists including one with classic jazz and big bands he listened to mixed in with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and others.

Steve even knew about her “top secret playlist,” which was home to boy bands, 80s ballads, and the occasional modern pop song. She damn near made him sign a NDA when he stumbled on that one.

But those were always listened to from the safety of headphones and ear buds. Anything that might reach anyone else’s ears was always Metallica, AC/DC, Rolling Stones  — names Steve was becoming familiar with as he spent more time in her space.

These sad, mournful guitars and low-toned voices were new. Steve set his jaw and tapped the access code in, the door sliding open. Toni wasn’t immediately in view; her work table was empty, as well as the bench that held her current tinkerings — a motor part as well as several tools lined up and organized. He turned the corner to the main part of the garage to find all the lights off, save for a projection of what appeared to be an older film; he couldn’t quite tell from the angle he was at.

Instead, Steve turned his eyes to sweep out over the cars lingering in the dark. Finally he spotted her, hunched down in the driver’s seat of her Ford Roadster, staring at the projection and occasionally bringing a bottle up to her lips — he found himself praying it was a mineral water or some kind of exotic orange juice rather than what he feared it would be. He pursed his lips and moved toward the car, unsure if Toni even registered him.

Coming to a stop at the passenger side, Steve let himself just stare at her for a moment, assessing. She looked tired, a frown turning her lips down. Her body was slumped in the car and her eyes really were the only thing that moved, watching the figures on the screen — and they glistened with tears gathered.

He swallowed hard and turned to finally gaze at the projection she was watching. Surprise washed over him as he saw a figure who was obviously an older Howard Stark, picking up a few wrapped packages from underneath a Christmas tree. The camera followed him as he moved to hand the gifts to a young teenage girl who had a scowl that matched the one Howard sported to a tee.

It hit Steve then that he was looking at a young Toni, probably around 14? Maybe 15? He was horrid on guessing ages. The girl had the same eyes as Toni and definitely the same pissed off look he had seen directed toward him a few times.

He looked back to her, wondering if she was just ignoring his presence or if she was so wrapped up in the film before her, she truly had no idea he was there. Steve leaned forward on the car, “Hey you,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her if the latter were true.

Toni slowly turned her head to him and seemed to pull herself from a daze. She sat up and wiped a hand over her eyes, “Hey. I didn’t wake you did I?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

He shook his head and stood straight, reaching for the door handle, “May I?”

She sniffled a bit, setting the empty bottle in her hand on the floor of the car, and nodded. He slid into the car, shutting the door behind him. It did not surprise him too much when he draped his arm over the back of the bench seat that Toni scooted closer to him, curling up against his side.

“How long have you been down here, honey?” he asked softly, curling his arm around her and kissing the top of her head. She was cold and he could feel her shivering a bit.

“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice sounding very far away in that moment. She shifted and looked up at him, “What time is it?”

“After 6 a.m., at least.”

Her brow furrowed, “Seriously? I thought it couldn’t be even 4 a.m. yet. I think I came down here after 2?”

Steve’s heart gave a pull — she wasn’t sleeping again. That was not good. He hated how she had not said anything, which meant whatever was bugging her was bad enough to have her hide it from him. His hand went up and down her arm, attempting to soothe away whatever pained her.

“A nightmare?” he ventured cautiously. The dreams had left her alone as of late, but sometimes she would get triggered — not often, but sometimes.

Toni shook her head, then hid her face against his side again as the Stark home movie played before them still. “Not unless you count the past coming back to haunt me,” she mumbled.

Two weeks ago, Toni had gotten word from MIT she would be named the distinguished alumni for 2016 and the college hoped she could return to speak to a group of engineering and physics majors, the two fields she studied. At first she had been thrilled, even strutted around a bit in her fashion, which made him smile immensely. But as she started to plan her presentation — “Yes, Steve, it has to be a _presentation_ , not just a talk. I’m Toni freakin’ Stark! I can’t just show up to MIT and bore them with a lecture about ‘following your dreams’ and ‘doing hard work.’” — Steve started to notice her enthusiasm wane.

“I need to impress them,” she said one night in the lab when he brought dinner to her after she wouldn’t budge from her seat.

“Toni, sweetheart, you show up and you’ll impress them,” he replied with a bit of a laugh.

That earned him an endearing smirk and a smacking kiss on the lips.

Whatever she had been working on, she hadn’t given up to him. FRIDAY did let it slip Toni had been pulling long-ago projects that never saw true fruition, either because of Toni’s lost interest or her declaration the cost was not worth it. One of them had been a therapy project, the AI explained, that Toni developed shortly before her kidnapping in Afghanistan. An attempt to help her finally put the death of her parents behind her that she eventually scrapped.

Steve desperately wanted to know why she stopped, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. The lie he told himself at first was he did not know how to broach the subject with her. But soon, Steve couldn’t deny the facts — he knew the story of when her parents died, the one Toni and the public knew. But the horrid feeling that was settling in his chest drew from the fact he knew the truth about their deaths, that Bucky was the assassin that stole Toni’s parents from her that night in 1995.

A week later, Steve still carried around that dread — every time he worked up the nerve, he would stop himself. It was just something he could not bring himself to tell her. It was selfish, a voice screamed in his head every time Howard and Maria Stark was mentioned in the slightest, selfish of him to put his discomfort before Toni’s feelings. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it, he couldn’t bare to cause her more pain…

Now, sitting in the Roaster with Toni curled up against him and sniffling every 30 seconds or so, the dread turned; it mimicked a knife stabbing in his side and twisting.

“This was two years before they died,” she whispered suddenly, her voice hallow as she broke the silence. Steve swallowed hard.

“He was trying so hard. I had finished my first semester at MIT and I was a fucking ass,” Toni continued as she picked at the threads of his T-shirt. “I was breaking the curfew, breaking the lab equipment, being a right ray of fucking sunshine. The Corporation, the guys who basically run the place, they were one Toni Stark crisis away from sending my ass packing.”

She shifted and Steve finally got the guts to look down at her; she was staring at the screen again. The knife in his side dug in a bit deeper as he saw the tears in her eyes.

“Dad told me, right before Mom started filming this, that he had talked to the Corporation — he shared the good news they would be keeping me,” Toni sniffled again. “And well you know to me, that meant some fancy backroom party where they were passing around scotch and cigars while Dad lamented about having a daughter, and oh wouldn’t they do him a favor by at least letting me get a damn MIT degree.”

She paused at that and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Steve squeezed her closer and kissed the top of her head, hoping to help her continue and praying he could help her make it through it without giving himself away.

“I wasn’t going to go back. I didn’t want to go back,” Toni finally said after a beat. “I flat out told him to his face he couldn’t make me. And he didn’t yell, just looked … disappointed.”

“Mom begged me, pleaded with me to go back. She said I had to try and if I had to do it for her, then to think of it that way. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I had to make my own path,” she continued, still picking at his T-shirt. “So I did, feeling every bit of spite for my dad that I could fit in my 14-year-old body.”

Another beat of silence, then the tears came in earnest. “It wasn’t until after they died that I realized what he had said and done to keep me in MIT. He had a formal hearing and stood in on my behalf. He told them …”

Here Toni had to pause as her voice choked. Steve couldn’t think of anything to do but gather her as close as he could.

Finally, after she had allowed herself a bit of a cry, she drew in a deep, shaky breath and rested her forehead against his chest. “Fury was able to get his hands on the transcripts from the hearing, of course. And in his _infinite wisdom_ ,” she said that part with a heavy dose of Toni sarcasm, “gave it to me a month after the funeral, while I was still wandering around the house, crying and not seeing anyone and refusing to go back to school.”

She turned so her cheek now rested against him and her eyes watched the screen as her father leaned forward, seeming to patiently attempt to talk to the younger Toni. Present Toni pressed against him and shifted in a way that made Steve think she was trying to disappear.

“Dad told the Corp that I was lost. Not only was I a child of the infamous war genius Howard Stark, I was born a girl. Everything was working against me. I had a chip on my shoulder and he didn’t blame me — he would have been the same way. I didn’t have a path. Yet — he apparently had said that to them in such a way that the transcript put an emphasis on it.” Her tone changed there; still sad but with a bit of ruefulness.

“But while the world was against me, he said, I had a genius even he couldn’t touch. And when I found my way,” Toni faltered here, her hand on his shirt tightening. “When I found my way, I would change the world. I would stun them all.”

Steve felt his heart was ramming in his chest. She spoke as if she memorized every one of Howard’s words from the hearing — knowing Toni, he was confident she had. The knife in his side was pushing a little deeper in.

“I didn’t have a path, but I could find it at MIT, he told them. I _would_ find it at MIT — he knew it, with every fiber of his being,” she said at last, sniffling considerably and fighting the tears. “If they would see past my troubled thoughts and actions, if they would see what _he saw_ , they would never regret allowing me to continue and to graduate.”

Toni did not continue after that. She curled into him, pulling her gaze away from the screen where the younger version of herself was pulled into a hug by her mother. It was the first time Steve had seen Maria Stark and he wasn’t surprised by her appearance. While he had always seen traits of Howard in Toni, he could see now how heavily she favored her mother. Her olive skin was clearly Maria’s, as well as the line of her jaw and her lips. Toni could have gotten the dark color of her hair from either parents, but the natural way it curled he suspected was Maria’s as well.

And the shape of her eyes. The film was too grainy to tell the color, but they were the same shape.

A few minutes passed before her sobs quieted again and she pulled in longer, shaky breaths — using the technique he had taught her to help calm her panics.

“Howard believed in you, Toni,” Steve said, his own voice hoarse and scratchy. “They both did.”

“I never got to tell him …” she stopped, forcing herself to take a deep breath, but the tears still came. “I never told him how much it meant to me. How I wished he had just _told_ me; why did he have to tell everyone else but me?”

“Shhhh,” Steve whispered, sitting up and wrapping both arms around her, rocking her back and forth as she clung to him. The knife of guilt twisted and he swallowed hard.

After 30 seconds, Toni pushed him back, pulling in air and shaking her head, “No, I have to stop. This is stupid. They’re gone, they’ve been gone almost my entire life and I can’t … I just can’t…”

“Toni,” he started, shaking his head as he cupped her face making her look him in the eye, “Honey, you can mourn them. You _should_ mourn them. It doesn’t matter if it’s been one year, five, 15, 100 … you are allowed your grief. You don’t have to put it away for anyone. Especially for me.”

Her head shook in disagreement, “No, you don’t understand. I’m _Toni Stark_ …”

“Toni, I know exactly who you are,” he interrupted her, refusing to let her look away. “I know _you,_ Toni. Grieving for your parents will not change a bit of that; possibly it will lift this burden you feel from your shoulders, but you are still my Toni.”

She pushed her lips together into a thin line and her chin shook with the threat of more tears. Steve reached up and gently wiped her cheeks clear of the ones that had already escaped. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

She closed her eyes and finally nodded, hands coming up to grip his wrists as if to anchor herself.

“It’s okay,” he whispered again, pulling her back to him, holding her close and trying to chase the demons away — both hers and his.

It seemed like a good while, but finally Toni’s breathing slowed and her tears stopped. One hand gripped the front of his shirt tightly, still, but the other sought one of his hands, which he readily gave her, and intertwined their fingers together. A few more minutes and her breathing had stopped shaking.

The music playing had been an afterthought in his mind as Toni had spoke, but now that they both had quieted, he heard the deep strum of a bass guitar mingle with a higher-pitched electric guitar. He couldn’t remember the name of this band — it was more modern, 90s Toni had told him once and known for lyrics that no one could understand. But the beat was slow, good enough to sway to.

So Steve reached behind him and opened his door, pulling back to step out and reach in for a bewildered-looking Toni.

“What are you doing?” she asked, brown eyes wide.

“I was going to ask you to dance,” Steve said, feeling a little shy about it now.

Toni’s mouth parted, hung open for a split second, and then closed again. Her brows knitted and she looked at him in a bit of confusion — her hair was a mess, there were tears drying on her cheeks, and her eyes were a tad red but she was absolutely beautiful.

“You want to dance to Pearl Jam?” she asked finally.

Steve shrugged, “Unless it’s illegal? And even if it is, why the hell not?”

She let out a huff of a laugh and shook her head, “Okay then, soldier,” she answered, scooting to the end of the seat and taking his hand.

Thankful to have her at least somewhat back to sarcastic Toni levels, he curled his fingers around hers and guided her from the car. Then, because he was trying his damnedest to keep his focus off the guilt burning in him, he gave her a slow twirl before he brought her close. His free hand graze her hip, around her waist, and came to a rest on the small of her back as his other hand clasped hers still.

His eyes watched her as they swayed; Toni kept her gaze concentrated on a spot that was eye level for her on his chest. The music was swelling — the lyrics still unintelligible, the singer’s voice straining a bit — and Steve couldn’t stop letting out a laugh himself.

Without him explaining, Toni smiled ruefully and then rested her cheek against him, “I told you. Pearl Jam’s Yellow Ledbetter is not exactly dancing music.”

“Hasn’t stopped us,” Steve replied softly, his hand on her back dropping down and squeezing her ass.

She gave a scoff, but wiggled against him more, “Could be worse,” she replied as the song died down, the bass and electric guitars slowly drawing it to an end. “Could have been White Snake or some equally horrendous 80s song.”

A softer tune was starting now, a man’s deep voice singing, “ _Pass me that lovely little gun,_ _My dear, my darling one_ …” This song may not have had the typical traits of Toni’s music, but the lyrics seemed right up her alley. He felt the tension in her as the song continued, so he kissed the top of her head and then moved down to whisper in her ear, “We both know you have quite a bit of 80s on that secret playlist…”

“Ughhhhh,” she groaned, pulling back and punching his shoulder. He could tell she put her whole weight behind it. It made him wince a bit, but not much. “I can’t believe you fucking found that. I swear to God, Steven, if you…”

He cut her off by pressing his mouth to hers. It effectively melted her resolve to continue to verbally express her annoyance. At first the kiss was slow and she let him dictate the pace, his lips teasing hers open. But after too long, Toni tip-toed up and wrapped her arms around his neck, taking over and demanding more. Steve wanted to give her more — every bit of his body tried to override his brain, push her against the Roadster, and give into that want.

But now was not the time.

He gentled the kiss as her small hands clutched the hem of his shirt and attempted to push it up his torso. She let out a soft groan as he pulled back, and he smiled lovingly at her as he brushed her hair behind her ear.

“Shhhh, sweetheart,” he breathed, pulling her off the Roadster and back into his arms. “Just dance with me a bit more and I’ll take you back to bed.”

“Mmmm,” Toni answered, her tone taking on a dreamy quality. “You drive a hard bargain, Captain.”

He chuckled low, swaying her body to the soft beat, “You need sleep more than you need sex, Toni.”

Her eyes opened wide, “I fucking beg to differ.”

Steve shook his head, “A few hours sleep and maybe you’ll get your wish.”

Toni licked her lips and looked up at him through those long lashes. The sadness still lurked there in her chocolate eyes, but Steve could see a glint of mischief fighting its way back. “Are you bribing me with sex, Steve?”

He kissed the tip of her nose, “I know your weak spots, what can I say?”

Now she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, a sure sign he _did_ know all those weak spots, but said nothing as she rested against him once more. They continued to sway gently in soft circles, the song dictating the beat. He felt Toni draw in a deep breath and snuggle against him.

“Thank you,” she said against his chest.

He squeezed her hand in his, “What for?”

She took a moment before answering, “For coming to find me. For listening and being here. For still trying to convince me that it’s okay to show emotion.” Another pause as she looked up at him with her soft eyes and full lips. “Thank you for loving me; for pulling me out of that car and making me dance.”

Steve swallowed hard and then leaned down, brushing his lips against hers.

“ _Hey, little train, wait for me. I was held in chains but now I'm free. I'm hanging in there, don't you see, In this process of elimination…_ ”

This song too ended and Steve could tell in the way Toni moved with him and leaned into him that she was fighting to stay awake. To further his suspicions, he whispered her name and got a very sleepy “Hmmm?” in reply.

So he quietly asked FRIDAY to shut off the projection and turn off the music. The garage was plunged into darkness. As Steve bent slightly, slipping one arm under Toni’s knees and cradling her upper body with the other, the AI flipped on a light in the work area to guide him toward the door.

“Steve?” Toni mumbled in a question as he carried her toward the door.

“Shhh, I got you,” he spoke softly against the crown of her head, thankful FRIDAY slid the door open for him when they approached.

Sleep was what she needed. Hell, maybe he needed a bit more too. Spending a morning in bed never killed anyone. Steve hoped by the time they both woke again, things would be clearer. Or at least easier to bear.

**Author's Note:**

> This became a bit deeper than just dancing. But I'm using this series to bridge the gap between Ultron and Civil War. Once again, need to build to knock it down. Horrible, horrible, horrible.


End file.
